What does your website content look like on a mobile phone? Is it legible and sharable, or is the reader forced to manipulate an awkward desk-top version of your site?

Well, if your content is difficult to read on a mobile device, then you’ll want to stick around for these sobering statistics.

Exact Target released a study of mobile users and their habits and found that:

• 89% of US online consumers age 15+ own a cell phone
• 41% own a smart-phone (with email capabilities, web access, and other advanced functionality)
• 66% of consumers use their smart-phones to check their email at least once a day
• 59% of respondents use their smart-phones to browse the internet daily
• 50% of respondents use Facebook on their smart-phones daily

And there’s more. When asked which of the following activities they had performed on their smart-phones, take a look at what users said (double-click to enlarge image):

Christina “CK” Kerley makes an interesting observation in the April/May issue of the Chief Content Officer magazine. She says that we live in two worlds – the physical and the virtual – where it is common place to watch our favorite TV show while also ‘tweeting’ our reactions via smart-phone to other fans.

Marketers must not only embrace, but also prepare their brands to fit into these two worlds. How?

By optimizing their web content for every device – desktop, laptop, and smartphone as well. Keep in mind that no matter how sophisticated your website looks or how smoothly it functions on a desk-top environment, it is now tightly scrunched up on a little mobile screen. What that means is that your content becomes unreadable, and your site useless to millions of mobile subscribers around the world!

With that said, there are easy do-it-yourself solutions to make your website mobile friendly including mobile plug-ins for WordPress sites, not relying heavily on Flash technologies (because they are not supported by most mobile devices), using fewer images and so on.

By optimizing your content for a mobile environment you are essentially providing a more compelling, and a more useful experience for your audience regardless of the size of their screen.

Is your website content suitable for mobile consumption? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Image credit: Exact Target image from the DreamGrow Social Media blog